Einde euro: eerder paradijs dan armageddon

In de Brusselse praktijk gaat men er vanuit dat het einde van de euro een gruwelijke ramp zou zijn. Maar klopt dat wel?

De beeldspraken liegen er niet om als het ontsporen van het EMU-project gaat. De lichten doven, burgeroorlogen breken uit, we kunnen de huur niet meer betalen en moeten allemaal op straat slapen, dat soort zaken. Totale onzin, zo stelt de econoom Joachim Voth:

With the Euro gone, we will see a return to the currency world before 1999. Some countries will follow German monetary policy, either by sharing a currency or by copying everything that Frankfurt does. This is the future for Holland, Finnland, Austria, perhaps the Scandinavian countries. The southern European countries will probably stick with a rest-Euro. Interest rates will be set appropriately; growth recovers; unemployment falls; asset price bubbles become less likely. Some countries may default, and banks in several countries may need to be nationalized, as they were in Scandinavia in the early 1990s. The euro will devalue against the new Deutschmark; exports from Italy, France, and Spain will be more competitive, and German export surpluses will shrink, reducing economic imbalances in the European Union. At the same time, vacations by the Mediterranean, French wine and Italian cars become cheaper for the Dutch, the Danes, and the Germans. This is not a vision of economic apocalypse – it is the way rebalancing should work.

Het is een verfrissend geluid in de doorgaans intens sombere discussie over de eurocrisis. Het einde van de eurozone in huidige vorm: goed voor u!